


Some Rules Are Meant to Be Broken

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Killervibe Week 2019, Matchmaker AU, Pining and angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 09:43:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20486834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: In the matchmaking biz, there are two rules.Rule 1 - Figure out what the client wants, and give it to them.Rule 2 - Never, ever fall in love with a client.Guess which rule Cisco Ramon has broken.Written for Killervibe Week Day 4: Free Day





	Some Rules Are Meant to Be Broken

**Author's Note:**

> So … a little background on this. A long time ago (looooooooooooong time ago) some lovely Tumblr nonny sent me a request for a matchmaker AU. I went OOOOOO. My brain started popping and fizzing with thoughts and before I knew it I had a whole multi-chapter story in my head. Which was where it stayed, because I think I was working on other multi-parters at the time and there are only so many hours in the day. I maybe wrote one scene, and then it sank into the depths of my Gdocs like a dinosaur succumbing to the tar pits.
> 
> This happens way more often than I care to admit.
> 
> Then I was whining on Discord about how I was suffering from choice paralysis for Free Day. Too many ideas, not enough words. And I realized I had a whole bunch of partial fics just sitting around, waiting for me to actually finish them up. So what did I do? Went back to the matchmaker AU and wrote the end. From scratch. In about a day and a half. In my defense it was all in the primordial ooze of my brain-meats, I just had to find the words and put them in the right order.
> 
> Anyway I hope if that very patient and long-denied nonny is reading this, you like it.

The offices of Connections were dim and shadowed as Cisco unlocked the door. He didn’t bother hitting any lights, so familiar with the layout that he could navigate the waiting room by the dim light of the Central City skyline outside the windows.

He walked down the hall, past a wall of framed pictures that gleamed faintly in the low light. Happy couples, wedding invites, birth announcements, even the occasional letter or printed email thanking Connections for matching the client with the love of their life. 

There were more inside his office, some of his personal triumphs. He turned away from them and felt around until he released the catch on two doors set into the wall. He pulled them open to reveal a small but well-stocked bar.

He ignored the glasses and the minifridge full of ice and chilled drinks, and grabbed a bottle of Scotch right off the shelf. A couple of steps took him to a small sitting area arranged by the window, and he dropped into one of the comfy chairs. Scowling, he worked the cork out. It released with a pop, and he tossed it aside and drank right from the bottle.

He didn’t normally drink at work unless he was entertaining a client, but this was a special occasion. 

Twenty minutes later, the lights in the waiting room flicked on, and then his door opened and his overhead lights blazed. He squinted and said, “Hey.”

His business partner, Iris West-Allen, leaned in the doorway. “Well, don’t you look pitiful.”

He slouched in his chair, looking up at her.

“You gonna share?” she asked.

He swung the bottle in her general direction. “Have a snort.”

She looked at it, shook her head, and got up to grab a glass from the bar, as comfortable in his office as she was in her own. She poured herself a couple of fingers of scotch and sipped. “You’re chugging this?” she asked. 

“Yes,” he said. “What’s the problem?”

“Nothing, if it was flavored vodka from Safeway. But this is a Lagavulin that’s old enough to drive.”

“Time it got drank, then,” he said, and took another slug straight from the bottle, while she shook her head. “Great party,” he said when the silence threatened to drown him.

“One of our best,” she replied. “I saw at least five couples pairing off.”

He stared at the label on the bottle. “Uh-huh.”

“Even Caitlin Snow seemed to find someone she liked.”

This time, the answer was much slower in coming. “Uh-huh.”

“I don’t know why we didn’t think of introducing her and Ronnie before.”

He shut his eyes and saw again the way that Caitlin had smiled and laughed with Ronnie Raymond. One of Iris’s clients, not his, but Cisco knew him anyway because they matched up each others’ clients all the time. Tall, good-looking, nice, smart, a go-getter, and on top of all that a genuinely good guy. Perfect for Caitlin. One of his better matches, honestly. 

Shit.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “They were perfect together.”

Iris stared at him, then shook her head. “You ding-dong,” she said. 

He rubbed his eyes and didn’t offer a defense. He had none. 

“What’s the first rule?”

“Don’t talk about Fight Club?” When she glared, he sighed. “Figure out what the client wants, and give it to them.”

“And the second rule?”

“Don’t fall in love with a client.”

“I told myself you were fine,” she said. “I told myself you were a pro and have been for years. I thought, hey, Cisco really likes this client. She’s a challenge, and he likes a challenge. You’re meeting her week after week, talking over her dates, texting with her, but that’s no big deal. We’ve all had clients we just clicked with.”

“Yeah.” Some of his best friends were former clients.

“And then Caitlin and Ronnie hit it off at the party, and I look over expecting to see you doing a goddamn happy dance. Instead you look like someone ran over your dog.”

He remembered that moment. Not that he’d noticed Iris looking at him. But the moment he’d seen Caitlin laugh at something Ronnie said, touching his arm, smiling up at him, he hadn’t had the bright _zing!_ of a match successfully made.

Instead, it had been like cement pouring into his gut, as he realized that he was watching the woman he loved fall in love with someone else.

Iris swirled her Scotch and stared him down. “Did you sabotage her intros?”

He sat up straight. “No!" 

"Are you sure?”

“I - ” He stopped.

What if he had? Maybe, subconsciously, he’d been in love with her since the moment she’d come into his office, grumpy and uncooperative because her mother had bought her a package of five introductions through a matchmaking service. What if he’d been finding matches that he could tell himself were the right guys for her, but in reality, were just wrong enough for her to keep coming back?

Keep seeing him. 

Keep talking to him.

Keep smiling at him with those big beautiful brown eyes. 

“I don’t know,” he muttered finally. 

Iris held out her hand. “Her file. Now.”

Cisco slumped down into his chair and drank again. “Top drawer.”

She went and got it, and refrained from pointing out that Caitlin’s file was the only one in the top drawer. She flipped it open to study his notes for a moment. “She’s got one more intro.”

He took another drink. “From the looks of it, she won’t be using it.”

She shrugged. “We deposited the check for the full package. Until she uses it all, she’s still a client.”

“Right.” Caitlin could come back years from now, asking for her last intro, and she would be entitled to it. 

What would he do if she did? Would he smile at her fondly, remembering that long-ago time when he’d fallen in love with her, the feelings soft and faded like old flower petals?

Or would they still be simmering away? Rising up in him like a volcano?

He didn’t know which to hope for.

Iris tucked Caitlin’s file under her arm and came back to the sitting area to give him a hug. “I’m sorry,” she said in his ear, her voice gentle.

He leaned against her. “My fault,” he muttered back. “I should have known what was going on sooner.”

“Love catches us all unawares.” She ruffled his hair and he ducked away from her, scowling and finger-combing it back into place. 

“You want to come over and watch terrible horror movies with my husband?” she asked. “I’ll supply the ice cream and the tissues.”

Tempting, but he knew that the whole time, he’d be remembering an evening he’d spent with Caitlin in much the same way. She’d been down because she’d gotten stood up for a third date, and Cisco had been the one supplying the ice cream. They’d ended up snuggled together on the couch - that exact couch right here, across from the chair he sat on - giggling helplessly over a cheesy sci-fi movie cued up on his laptop.

(He’d also taken great pleasure in calling Julian and ripping him a new one the next day. No spark or not, Connections clients did _not _stand up other clients without so much as a text.)

“I think I’ll go home and wallow on my own for a day or two,” he said, re-corking the Scotch and setting it on the coffee table. “Maybe crack open some Safeway vodka. I got a bottle of caramel flavor that’s calling my name.”

Iris eyed the level of the liquor. “Want me to drive you?”

He got to his feet and gulped when the floor tipped under his feet. “Maybe you’d better,” he said.

* * *

He felt a little steadier when she dropped him off at his building. Steady enough to get up to his loft, anyway. She leaned over from the driver’s seat, eyes compassionate. “Call me if you need me. Don’t drink yourself to death.”

“No promises,” he said. 

“You gonna be okay?” she asked.

“I’ve fallen in love before,” he said. “This is just one heartbreak. I’ll survive, and I’ll fall in love again someday.”

But none of them would be her.

* * *

A week later, Cisco had clocked several hangovers, lots of empty Kleenex boxes, and about a million calories in ice cream. The sharp slice of pain had dulled to an ache in his chest. 

Three or four hundred times a day, he picked up his phone to text Caitlin. Sometimes it was an absent-minded, _Oh hey, she’d enjoy this meme_ and sometimes it was _what would it hurt to say hi? _

Sometimes, when he was being honest with himself, he was about to declare his love and beg her to be with him. 

She hadn’t contacted him. Obviously, too busy being wildly in love with Ronnie Raymond. 

In his weaker moments, he pictured them holding hands as they walked by the river, dining by candlelight, kissing on a balcony before slipping inside to a darkened bedroom.

That was usually followed by more drinking, more tears, and more ice cream. 

He managed, somehow, to keep the messier moments out of the office, if only because he was intensely aware of Iris’s compassionate and piercing eye. It helped that he’d given their office assistant the key to his liquor cabinet, with strict instructions not to give it back unless he was with a client, and threats of death and dismemberment if he caught Ralph with liquor on his breath at work. 

So Cisco was unfortunately sober as he sat at his desk, riffling through index cards with client names and brief notes on them, trying to figure out who would be enough of a match for each other to set up intros. 

Usually it felt like a jigsaw puzzle, moving people next to each other, making guesses at who would click into place. This guy would love that girl’s quirky sense of humor. That guy would gel nicely with this guy’s freewheeling lifestyle. That girl would be impressed by this girl’s high-powered job. 

But for the past week, it had felt like shoving paper dolls around. The client cards sat on his desk, click-less. Not buzzing or fizzing in the way that meant _this could be true love. _Just … two people standing next to each other. 

He shoved his hands through his hair and let out a deep groan. 

_This is what you do. You’re good at it, and you love it._

“Not right now, I don’t,” he said to his empty office. 

His phone dinged with a text. He picked it up. Iris had written, _Running late. Not going to be back for my 2:30. It’s an intake. Can you do it for me?_

**No prob,** he wrote back. **Here?**

_She’d prefer to meet at Jitters_

Sometimes people asked for that. They didn’t want to feel so much like they were contracting a service. More like they were chatting with a friend, asking for a casual setup. Cisco was happy to let them feel that way, even as they were John Hancock'ing the contract and promising to pay their more than healthy fee. 

And it would be good to get out of here. Stretch his legs, get some air and caffeine. Who knew - maybe a new client would kickstart his mojo. 

He tapped out, **Has this new girl got a file?**

_On my desk _

_You’re the best_

**Damn right I am**

He glanced at the time and realized he was going to need to book it in order to get downstairs to the coffee shop on time. Damn, Iris had cut it close. He dashed across the hall to his partner’s office and grabbed the manila envelope that sat on her otherwise pristine desk. “Client meet at Jitters,” he called out on his way through the waiting room. “Text if you need me.”

“Got it, boss,” Ralph said cheerily, scrolling through Facebook as he did a basic background check on a prospective client. 

“And don’t call me boss.”

“You betcha, boss.”

Cisco rolled his eyes and yanked the door shut behind him.

He’d planned to have a quick look at their new client’s file on the elevator, but it was occupied by a guy from the next floor up, someone he’d successfully set up last year. Cisco smiled and glad handed and made appreciative noises over the pictures of the house the couple had just bought together, but he stepped out of the elevator with the envelope still sealed. 

Jitters was on the street-level floor of their building. When he walked in, a barista waved to him and started making his usual without asking. He waved back and looked around. Nobody was obviously waiting, so he grabbed a quiet corner booth and settled down to open up the client file.

Instead of the usual intake form with attached picture, there was just a sheet of blank printer paper with Iris’s scrawl dashed across it. 

_Remember rule one._

He gaped at it. 

Then the heaviness of the envelope registered. He put his hand in and pulled out the sparkling starburst pin that they issued to all their clients, so they could identify each other at an intro. Worlds away from a chrysanthemum and a copy of _Wuthering Heights. _

“What?” he whispered.

The bell over the door jingled, and he looked up. “Caitlin,” he said numbly.

It felt like a year, not a week, since he’d seen her. He drank her in. God, she was so beautiful. But pale. She looked pale. And there were shadows under her eyes, even though she’d tried to hide them with makeup. 

Had she been lying awake like him? Or … maybe she’d been awake for a better reason, with Ronnie.

She smiled. Was it his imagination or was it a nervous smile? “Hi, Cisco. Can I sit down?”

“Hey. I actually - uh - I’m meeting a client here - ” He saw the starburst pin on her blouse, identical to the one he held, and stopped. 

“You’re meeting me,” Caitlin said, taking a seat across from him.

“I don’t - ” Maybe he wasn’t caffeinated enough, even though he’d downed three or four cups since this morning. “Did Iris talk to you?”

“Yes,” she said, twisting her hands together on the tabletop. “You didn’t text.”

He avoided her eyes. “No, sorry, we’ve been busy - ”

“You usually text the day after a date to see how it went, but you didn’t, after the party. And you left that night kind of quickly, without saying goodbye. So I - I waited a day and then I called the office, just in case you weren’t feeling well. And Iris told me that she was going to be my matchmaker now.”

“We do that sometimes,” he said. “Shuffle things around. To redistribute the workload.”

Lie and a half. They never, ever did that. They matched clients with matchmakers as carefully as they matched clients with each other. 

“Yes,” Caitlin said. “That’s what Iris said." 

"So - um. What’s this all about? You just wanted to talk?" 

Was this Iris’s idea of closure? Did she somehow think this would be good for him?

This was very much not good for him. He was already mentally selecting which flavor of vodka was going to destroy his liver tonight.

"I met with Iris here yesterday,” Caitlin said. “We talked for awhile and then she asked me what I want. And I told her.” She bit her lip and held his gaze. “I want you.”

“Me,” he said.

She nodded. Her hands twisted around themselves like a nest of anxious worms. “Not as my matchmaker. As - as my match.”

He felt his mouth fall open. “But … ” he said numbly. “But Ronnie. You were totally into Ronnie at the party.”

“Ronnie was very nice,” Caitlin said. “He asked for my number and we had dinner the next day. And if things were different, I could see us becoming something. But there was already you.”

He swallowed hard. Him.

Him over Ronnie. Tall, hot, good-guy Ronnie. 

She twisted her hands again. “And I know I’m a client and you’re a professional and there are rules about this kind of thing. But the best part of this whole experience has been you. Every date I went on, I was just thinking the whole time how to tell you about it. Every time your name pops up on my phone, my heart skips a beat. Every day I just want to come by the office here and see you, talk to you, and the days I could were just … better, Cisco, they were better.”

She gulped air, as if the cascade of feelings had drained her lungs to the bottom. 

“Maybe this is like therapy where transference is a risk, and maybe you’re just like that with everyone, but I -”

“I’m not, though,” he said, reaching out across the table for her hand.

She stopped dead, her eyes going big. “You’re not?”

He shook his head. “Only with you.”

“Oh,” she breathed.

“And I am a professional and we do have rules, but I was just - I was in the middle of it before I even knew what was happening.”

“The middle of what?”

“Love,” he said. “I’m all the way in the middle of love with you, and I’ve been a complete wreck trying to find my way out.”

Her hand tightened on his. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t try to get out. Just stay here. With me.”

She was too far away, a continent of table in between them. He scooted around the booth and took her face in his hands, asking a silent question.

She answered it by leaning forward and kissing him. 

Joy bubbled up, floating him away until his only anchors to earth were her lips on his, her arms around his neck, the curves of her body pressed up against his.

Something thumped, and someone coughed.

They broke apart and found the red-faced barista setting two coffees down in front of them. “Both on the Connections tab?” she asked.

Cisco dug in his pocket. “No, this is personal.” He wiggled his brows at Cailtin. “I know how you feel about the first date, but seriously, let me get this.”

She leaned into him. “Fine but I’m buying the ice cream later on.”

The barista took his credit card away, still blushing, and Cisco took a sip of his latte. It was the same thing he always got, but it tasted like ambrosia. “So, ice cream?” he asked, taking Caitlin’s hand.

“Well, or dinner, or …” She trailed off. “You’re not going to get in trouble for this or anything, are you?”

“Considering Iris set this whole thing up like the scheming schemer she is, I’m gonna go with no.”

“But what if you get your license revoked, or something?”

“Just how organized do you think we are?” He kissed her knuckles. “No, I’m not gonna lose my license. No license to lose. There are a couple of rules in the matchmaking biz, but they’re kinda like the pirate code.”

“Guidelines,” Caitlin said, and he grinned hugely at her. 

“Exactly. There is a rule about never falling in love with a client, and that’s a grey area for us, but technically you’re Iris’s client now, not mine.”

“Mmmm. Seems like splitting hairs.”

“I’ll gladly split a few hairs for us,” he said. “But the very first, most important rule is, get the client what they want.” He squeezed her hand. “And you already told me what you want. Which is coincidentally what I want, which …” He paused. “Hang on, does that make me my own client now?” How much did he owe himself? Hmmm.

“Oh! Iris asked me to give you this,” Caitlin said. She dug around in her purse and handed over an envelope with the logo of Connections in the return address corner. 

Somehow knowing what he would find, Cisco opened it anyway. Inside was an invoice. Iris’s name was neatly typed in the Matchmaker line, and on the line where they would put the client’s name, he saw his own.

_One introduction,_ the invoice read. And down where the price would be, Iris had written _I totally expect to be your best man._

Cisco grinned at it and tucked it away. “Hey,” he said, reaching out to touch the starburst on Caitlin’s shirt. “You can take that off. You’re not going to need it anymore.”

Caitlin peered down to undo the pin. “No, I most certainly won’t.”

FINIS


End file.
